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Post by dm_mainprize on Feb 25, 2015 2:20:42 GMT
Hello DMs, Time for another DM-Nastics, if you have missed the last two be sure you go find them and put your DM skills to the test.
Now for this week I thought we could try and test our abilities as story tellers and story builders. Below are some adventure hooks. Your job is to take one of these hooks and create either a whole story based off of it or weave it into part of your worlds existing story. Good luck have fun and put your brains to the test.
[Fantasy] For the past 3-months a black hand with a red dot in the center of the palm has appeared on the doors of various seemingly random houses throughout the city. At the end of each month a member of that household goes missing.
[Fantasy] Your players arrive in a town and all the townsfolk are behaving oddly, repeating themselves each time the PCs interact with them. It seems as if the words and actions of everyone in the village have been pre-scripted.
[Horror] Each night when the PCs sleep or make camp off in the distance they hear screaming. If they search for the source the source seems to move away from them, if they give up and return to bed or to their camp the screaming moves closer again.
[Any] Each morning when the PCs wake up they find that the items of their inventory or backpacks have been removed and spread about the campsite to form symbols or letters.
[Sci-Fi] A group of black market smugglers are rumored to be trading the remains of powerful sentient being as a means of making biological weapons of mass destruction to a potentially dangerous third party.
Thats all for this week. Cant wait to see what you guys come up with.
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Post by ÄlmarianKnight on Feb 25, 2015 9:50:50 GMT
[The First Fantasy Hook]:
For the past 3-months a black hand with a red dot in the center of the palm has appeared on the doors of various seemingly random houses throughout the city. At the end of each month a member of that household goes missing.
After talking around, the players find that the people who are missing are the people with a tragic or mysterious past. The players also (one way or another) meet a young girl, a street urchin and the innkeeper of the only inn in the city: The Unlucky Leg. The girl has a mysterious past. But, the innkeeper has been a resident for years. The innkeeper needs to say: "people come to me to get a good name in this city".
As the players search around, a strange darkness/twilight falls upon the city. Soon, severed hands start appearing on the doorsteps of the missing. Burned and charred hands with jewels embedded into their palms. And out of the darkness, above and surrounding the city, comes screaming. If the party allows the little girl to follow them she states plainly: "they are the screeching of the damned."
The city folk are now in an uproar, people are running in all directions. The few who run into the twilighted void, disappear. The screeching stops and so does the rushing of the people when a dark, twisted "star" comes down from the void. It hovers above the city center, and spews darkness.
When the players reach the city center (if they are with the girl, the girl arrives with them) the girl is confronting (or confronts) a man in a cloak. Of course, the man in the cloak turns out to be the innkeeper.
GIRL: "Where are they?"
I.K.: "Sha, you always try to interfere with the natural chaos."
With that the evil innkeeper claps is hands and a hoard of dark-skinned, charred people enter from both sides of room, surrounding the players. The people have red jewels embedded into their palms and foreheads. The innkeeper turns to the players, pointing at them.
I.K.: "Listen, all of you. You want to be rid of your hideous forms, that is why you came to me. You wanted everyone in the city to look at you with approving eyes, now destroy these people and you shall take the ransom".
The players fight the strange zombie-like people. And discover, sadly, that they regrow their limbs. The players have to intentionally strike the head of the zombie things so as to break their forehead crystals.
After the fight, the girl grabs the (now exhausted) innkeeper by shoulders and both will explode into a column of light: leaving the characters alone with fallen zombie-men. The darkness/twilight disappears from the city, leaving the people shaken and disturbed. They all cheer the players for saving them. And the mayor invited them all to dine with him.
In a marvel-ish ending, the players see a streak of darkness and lightning warring in the sky.
[The Second Fantasy Hook]
The players soon realize that they are playing Final Fantasy...
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2015 16:46:15 GMT
[The Second Fantasy Hook] The players soon realize that they are playing Final Fantasy... lmao, nice one "Each morning when the PCs wake up they find that the items of their inventory or backpacks have been removed and spread about the campsite to form symbols or letters." Among the loot the characters recently acquired during their last adventure was Jin Elandre's favorite lucky coin. The coin itself is nonmagical, but has been rubbed so frequently that the mint marks are worn out. Jin himself wasn't so lucky, for one night he was murdered on the evening before his wedding. The coin was taken by his murderer then spent, re-entered circulation and changed hands many times, before winding up in the PC's possession. The ghost of Jin follows it, hoping its 'luck' will help him find someone capable of bringing his murderer to justice. Soon after the party acquires the coin, Jin exercises his limited ability to interact with the mortal world by arranging the PCs' items to spell out clues that will eventually lead to the murderer. For super trope style, the murderer was jealous of Jin, for he desired the affection of Jin's fiance himself. He's consoling her and getting intimate, and Jin's helpless ire is growing. |
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Post by dm_mainprize on Feb 26, 2015 22:35:37 GMT
[Fantasy] Your players arrive in a town and all the townsfolk are behaving oddly, repeating themselves each time the PCs interact with them. It seems as if the words and actions of everyone in the village have been pre-scripted. The players arrive in a town and begin mingling with the local's however something isn't right. Soon they realize all the locals can only do the same tasks and repeat the same words. Upon further investigation they find that all the locals are actually constructs built by an old gnome wizard. He created this fantasy town full of highly believable constructs to keep people way from his tower where he conducts his work. He is able to alter the scripted functions of each person by swapping out magical crystals stored inside their chest. To the horror of the players they will find that these constructs were actually once people that he turned into construct. The players must then try to get the wizard to turn them back into people. But this is not something he will do willingly and he has an army of constructs at his disposal, construct the players dont want to injure. |
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Post by catcharlie on Sept 5, 2015 21:06:15 GMT
[Sci-Fi] A group of black market smugglers are rumored to be trading the remains of powerful sentient being as a means of making biological weapons of mass destruction to a potentially dangerous third party.
The group of Black market smugglers are actually a team of caught smugglers, mercenaries, law enforcement, and military personal (The caught smugglers were promised their freedom and their records wiped) who have been commissioned to draw out and arrest any potential threats to [high ranking personal like a president or royalty] who will be soon making a public appearance/announcement.
The party gets caught up and processed as one of these 'potential threats' (maybe it was payback from one of the caught smugglers, maybe you just looked like the wrong sort, or maybe it was something else), once the party has been confined they can ether force their own way out of custody, or wait for the process to complete and be released with an apology for the mix up (unless someone in the party has an outstanding criminal record?).
Once they are out they find out that someone on the 'black market' team was actually selling the remains and/or creating weapons out of it! Find the culprit, find where the weapons/remains ended up and recover them.
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Post by frohtastic on Sept 9, 2015 4:31:38 GMT
They shouldnt have done it, they should have just let it be in its place, but no their greed got the best off them and before they knew it they were violating the sanctity of the catacombs, robbing it of the treasures and golden reliquary. Because now its following them, inching ever closer, always at the side of their vision, the constant buzz like nails scraping against stone and the whispers in their mind driving them to near insanity. "return the slab!" |
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Post by halfacreoffun on May 20, 2016 8:00:10 GMT
[Fantasy] For the past 3-months a black hand with a red dot in the center of the palm has appeared on the doors of various seemingly random houses throughout the city. At the end of each month a member of that household goes missing.
You've been traveling for a few days now. These woods are dark even at mid afternoon. Unnaturally dark. You get the feeling somethings not right. It's reaching dusk or is it? You hear a horse a short distance ahead. It sounds distressed.
Upon reaching it you find its rider, a large man fully clad in plate armor. Dead, a large hole in the front of his steel helmet, a bloody smeared hand print surrounds it. A strange worm like creature, writhing in pain, tries to crawl from the palm of his right hand. Clenched in his left is a letter. It reads,
" Father,
I know you are disappointed in me, but I love her. I don't care that she is just the daughter of a smith. If you would have only taken the time to get to know her. I'm sorry I left the way I did all those years ago. You should know you have a grandson. We are living in Armrandal now. This is a strange place. Something is not right here, people go missing but no one seems to care. I beg of you forgive me of my trespasses. Come to Armrandal, take Samson and raise him to be the noble I should have been. Quickly father please.
Your son, Tandril
Upon arriving in Armrandal you are quickly approached by a tall wiry man. He looks much like the old man in the forest. "Help me, please. You're not from Armrandal are you? My wife she's gone missing. It's the Worm Cult, I know it is.
Party goes around town trying to find info. The locals don't trust them and won't tell them anything. Until a "chance encounter with a group of thieving street rats. The kids know everything, they are orphans because their parents had been taken by the cult. The cult are worshippers of a false God named Lofruar the Worm Eater.
The party learns of a man who knows how to find them. RP it out and find out the entrance to the lair.
The party fights it way through cultists and strange zombie like humans with the bloody hand and gaping hole in their head.
When they reach Lofruar he explains to them that the people taken are chosen by the Lord of the city who is 1 of his followers. People volunteer as tribute to their "God", are criminals or people who had crossed the Lord. The worms breed and multiply inside the hosts until mature at that time they exit the body through the hand and he collects them to eat. They give him great power. (Yes he's monologueing for as long as they let him) The host then injects the last of the worms to exit into a new host. The former host becomes the mindless beings you fought in the sewer. He is Githyanki trapped on this plane during the The Fall of the Dragons and the Great Sealing. Violence ensues. The party wins but has to run when the city guards and the Lord of the city arrive.
That's it for now...
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Post by dmsarah on Nov 16, 2016 1:57:47 GMT
[Fantasy] Your players arrive in a town and all the townsfolk are behaving oddly, repeating themselves each time the PCs interact with them. It seems as if the words and actions of everyone in the village have been pre-scripted.
Okay. So some background first, as I am plugging this into the story of my world which already exists. At the time period where my players are currently playing, magic is outlawed. Specifically summoning magic, but any other type of spell casting as well. I've decided that if it is discovered that you are a summoner, you will be immediately put to death. However, if you are a spell caster of some other sort, you may face some different consequence to keep you from casting spells. I hadn't completely decided what this was yet, but this may be an option:
The players arrive in a rather secluded city. As they enter, they notice that it is littered with imperial guards. In fact, it seems that nearly every house has into own guard and there are more than just those as well.
Aside from the unusually large military presence, everything seems normal. The citizens speak a bit oddly, carefully innunciating every word, but that could just be the dialect. The players may believe this until the come across some individuals of very different cultural backgrounds. These people must have moved here, not been born and raised in this city, yet they speak like everyone else does, filling out the possibility of a regional dialect. The players stay the night in the local inn, thinking that it has certainly been an odd day, but nothing malicious has happened, so they sleep well. The next morning, as they order their breakfast, they notice that the waitress speaks with the exact same words as she had the day prior. The same people are in the same seats, having largely the same conversations as they did yesterday. The players keep hearing the same strange phrases over and over again. The words themselves are not strange, but the fact that no one in this city speaks with any ease is. When ordering something from the waitress, everyone always uses the phrase "I would like to order ... for my meal today, if you please madam." As they pass one another in the streets, their conversations are largely as follows:
"Hello. How are you doing today? I hope that all is well."
"Thank you. All is well with me today. How are you doing today? I hope that all is well."
Through some unknown event, the player learn that the town is actually where many spell casters who revoke their magical ways are sent. Here, they are given a list of available phrases they are allowed to use throughout the day. These phrases are known to have no possibility of being used to cast a spell. The multitude of guards are there to make sure that no one ever goes "off-script" or does anything suspicious, which could be considered to have the intention of casting a spell.
I also like the idea of there being no herbs or spices in the city, so all the food tastes rather bland.
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